Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during the Q&A session, answered the question of when the Russian citizens' "life will change for the better."
The head of state admitted that the life for Russian citizens has become more challenging, as several years ago Russia faced shocks, which undermined the situation in the domestic market and adversely affected the social sphere,
"It is true, this is why I identified this topic as one of the most acute and important. I would like to remind you that several years ago we encountered a number of shocks at once - it was not even external shocks associated with the so-called sanctions or external restrictions, but our traditional export goods - oil, oil products, gas, hydrocarbons, metals, chemical fertilizers, chemistry in general, some other goods," he noted. "Therefore, we were confronted with such unpleasant element in the economy and in the social sphere," the Russian president stressed.
"One of the significant elements of expenses today are loan repayments. Banks today give out loans that are secured against 40% of wages, which is risky. In my opinion, the central bank should pay attention to this, because we don't want to create these bubbles in the economy," Vladimir Putin explained.
He added that the reduction of the shadow sector in the economy also negatively affected real income statistics. "We have approximately 100,000 self-employed people who legalized their activities and the so-called shadow market has shrunk - this also affects real incomes in the negative direction," the president noted.
The president noted that real incomes of Russian citizens had been on the decline over several years. However, he pointed out that a gradual recovery in the public’s real incomes has already begun. "Indeed, the real incomes of citizens declined over several years. The biggest drop was in 2016. Now, incomes are gradually recovering," he said.
Putin noted that it is necessary to differentiate between the two concepts - real disposable incomes of the population and wages.
The annual special program 'Direct Line with Vladimir Putin' has kicked of at noon today. This will be Putin’s 17th Q&A session. More than 1.5 million questions for the Russian president had been registered.
